One-time batting leader Ron Santo has now been pushed off of the top ten batting leaderboard in my 1966 National League replay. Is it because he’s doing poorly now?
Well, partially. He has gone 1 for 19 in his last five games and is now batting .308.
He also just has more competition. Some good players are finally getting more playing time and as a result, they qualify the batting average (to make things simple, I use 3.1 PA times the number of games of the team that played the least). When I started this replay years ago, I decided to use actual lineups. That meant players like Dick Allen and Rico Carty wouldn’t play every day. Allen is an interesting case. He went almost a full month without starting a game (April 29 to May 23). The Phillies really could have used his 1-1-0-0-0-7 card. As a result, he just didn’t have the at-bats to qualify for the leaderboards. He is just getting to that point.
Carty, an OF-1 for the Braves, is a similar situation. His 55-7 with four 8s would have been useful for Atlanta but he kept missing a few games here and there (injuries?) so he kept missing the qualifications mark.
Not anymore. Now Allen and Carty are showing up and they are bumping everybody down and Santo off the charts. Needless to say, Allen and Carty have both been hitting the cover off the ball in my replay. They always have, now they get the recognition.
For what it’s worth, Allen did finish up the season with 599 at-bats in real life in 1966 despite the month going AWOL. Carty must have missed all his games early because he ended up with 588.
LA’s Tommy Davis will probably never reach the qualifications necessary and that’s too bad for the Dodgers. He’s finally getting some games in and boy, he is producing! Since May 20, he has gone 54 for 113 with a fifteen game hit streak! He is only slated for 76 starts. Right now, he is hitting a nifty .438 in 137 at-bats.
I still like that I decided to use actual lineups. It gives me an insight into why decisions are made in baseball (why did the Braves use Carty at catcher for four straight days? I’m sure there was a reason). I will say that the better teams (LA, SF) are the ones that have a consistent lineup compared to ones that try different formulas (Chi, NY).
Let’s go Ronnie!
